Israel alone

John Bolton explains the problems facing Israel in regard to Iran's nuclear program:

Legions of senior American officials have descended on Jerusalem recently, but the most important of them has been Defense Secretary Robert Gates. His central objective was to dissuade Israel from carrying out military strikes against Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. Under the guise of counseling “patience,” Mr. Gates again conveyed President Barack Obama’s emphatic thumbs down on military force.

The public outcome of Mr. Gates’s visit appeared polite but inconclusive. Yet Iran’s progress with nuclear weapons and air defenses means Israel’s military option is declining over time. It will have to make a decision soon, and it will be no surprise if Israel strikes by year’s end. Israel’s choice could determine whether Iran obtains nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future.

Mr. Obama’s approach to Tehran has been his “open hand,” yet his gesture has not only been ignored by Iran but deemed irrelevant as the country looks inward to resolve the aftermath of its fraudulent election. The hardliner “winner” of that election, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was recently forced to fire a deputy who once said something vaguely soothing about Israel. Clearly, negotiations with the White House are not exactly topping the Iranian agenda.

Beyond that, Mr. Obama’s negotiation strategy faces insuperable time pressure. French President Nicolas Sarkozy proclaimed that Iran must re-start negotiations with the West by September’s G-20 summit. But this means little when, with each passing day, Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile laboratories, production facilities and military bases are all churning. Israel is focused on these facts, not the illusion of “tough” diplomacy.

Israel rejects another feature of Mr. Obama’s diplomatic stance. The Israelis do not believe that progress with the Palestinians will facilitate a deal on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Though Mr. Gates and others have pressed this fanciful analysis, Israel will not be moved.

Worse, Mr. Obama has no new strategic thinking on Iran. He vaguely promises to offer the country the carrot of diplomacy—followed by an empty threat of sanctions down the road if Iran does not comply with the U.S.’s requests. This is precisely the European Union’s approach, which has failed for over six years.

There’s no reason Iran would suddenly now bow to Mr. Obama’s diplomatic efforts, especially after its embarrassing election in June. So with diplomacy out the door, how will Iran be tamed?

Mr. Gates’ mission had extraordinary significance. Israel sees the political and military landscape in a very inauspicious light. It also worries that, once ensnared in negotiations, the Obama administration will find it very hard to extricate itself. The Israelis are probably right. To prove the success of his “open hand,” Mr. Obama will declare victory for “diplomacy” even if it means little to no gains on Iran’s nuclear program.

Under the worst-case scenario, Iran will continue improving its nuclear facilities and Mr. Obama will become the first U.S. president to tie the issue of Israel’s nuclear capabilities into negotiations about Iran’s.

Israel understands that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent commitment to extend the U.S. “defense umbrella” to Israel is not a guarantee of nuclear retaliation, and that it is wholly insufficient to deter Iran from obliterating Israel if it so decides. In fact, Mrs. Clinton’s comment tacitly concedes that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons, exactly the wrong message. Since Israel, like the U.S., is well aware its missile defense system is imperfect, whatever Mr. Gates said about the “defense umbrella” will be politely ignored.

Relations between the U.S. and Israel are more strained now than at any time since the 1956 Suez Canal crisis. Mr. Gates’s message for Israel not to act on Iran, and the U.S. pressure he brought to bear, highlight the weight of Israel’s lonely burden.

Striking Iran’s nuclear program will not be precipitous or poorly thought out. Israel’s attack, if it happens, will have followed enormously difficult deliberation over terrible imponderables, and years of patiently waiting on innumerable failed diplomatic efforts. Absent Israeli action, prepare for a nuclear Iran.

It is deeply saddening that one of the key problems facing Israel it the American presidential administration.

Israel's problem is that it needs help from the outside to survive and the United States is the only nation on earth which has been willing to provide that assistance. Other nations are either too poor, too dependant on Muslim oil or too antisemitic to take Israel as an ally and subsidize its defense.

Now that the US is in the grip of a regime which is as mired in Jew hatred as any in Old Europe (unless you really believe that Obama could sit in Jeremiah Wright's "church" for 20 years and not figure out that the old bastard hated Jews as much as he hated the United States) it seems that Israel must stand alone.

I wonder if now America's Jewish population will wake up and realize how out of place they are in the Democrat party.

Of course it is very possible that God has decided to stop using the USA as a shield to protect Israel and is intending to start doing the job personally. If this is the case then I pity Israel's enemies.

One Down. . .

From the Jerusalem Post:

The IAF on Thursday bombed a building in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza, reportedly killing seven people, including senior Hamas leader and cleric Sheikh Nizar Rayyan, and injuring thirty others.

Army Radio reported that according to Palestinian sources, his family was warned before the attack but did not leave the building.

Earlier, the IAF launched a quick-fire response shortly after a Grad-type missile slammed into the top floor of an Ashdod building.

The army said that the air force struck both the Gaza terror cell that launched the projectile and the launching device. Several Hamas homes which were used to store weapons were also bombed in the afternoon air raid.

Since Thursday morning, the IAF struck over 20 targets, including rocket launching sites in northern Gaza, as well as tunnels and a car in the southern Gaza Strip, killing several Hamas operatives.

In addition, the IAF bombed the homes of three senior Gaza terrorists.

As I've said before this whole Israeli/Palestinian business does not end until one side loses so badly that they lose the will to continue the fight.

This means either the Jews evacuating the land or accepting the harshest form of dhimminitude or the Arabs permanently abandoning the hope of destroying the Jewish state.

If the Israelis want to emerge the winners in this conflict they had better stop listening to "The World" and fraking around with "proportionate responses" and crush the Palestinians utterly.

Nothing else will cause the Arabs to abandon even so much as an idle fantasy of eradicating the Jews.

I have no doubt

I found this tidbit on a list of random observations over on Brussels Journal:

The radicals that govern Gaza demand that Israel open the common border. If this is not done, their wards are in danger of “suffocating.” We might have a remarkable case wrapped into this demand. It is not unusual that a party commits openly to the destruction of another state. When such an entity demands that, to survive, it be allowed to have access to its chosen enemy, we seem to have entered the realm of the surreal.

PS. It is reported (12 April) that from Gaza Hamas has subjected an Israeli refinery to a rocket attack. It so happens that this is the refinery that delivers Gaza’s fuel. The deliveries are interrupted. Wait for news that Hamas protests the hardship created for innocents by the lack of gas.

Checking out the rest would be worth your time.

Who is threatened by Iran?

In the comments to my post of Mr. Bolton's comments on the NIE someone asks this:

Iran has attacked how many countries in the last 50 years?

Well, let's see. Iran has attacked the Unites States. The hostage situation back in 1979 was brought about when armed persons acting with the approval of Iran's Islamic revolutionary government invaded the US Embassy in Tehran (which was US soil under international law) and took US citizens, who were protected by their diplomatic status under international law, prisoner.

This was an act of war against the US.

Iran's Islamic revolutionary government entered a formal declaration of war against the United States of America. They have never rescinded that declaration of war.

This is another act of war against the US.

Iran has supported with money, training, sanctuary and the supply of weapons and explosives terrorist organizations like the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades which have attacked Israel. Both civilian and military attacks have been carried out by Iranian surrogates in the state of Israel.

This is an act of war against Israel.

Hezbollah terrorists supported and directed by Iran have invaded the sovereign territory of Lebanon and used it as a base from which to attack Israel. This has drawn entirely justified counterattacks by the IDF on Lebanese territory.

This is an act of war against both Israel and Lebanon.

Iran has supplied money, arms, training, sanctuary and sophisticated anti-personnel and anti-vehicle land mines to terrorist forces fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These actions of Iran have resulted in the murder of both civilians and military forces of the United States, Iraq and Afghanistan.

These are acts of war against the United States, Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, just off the top of my head, Iran has attacked the United States, Israel, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq all not just within the last 50 years but within the last two years.

Bolton tears apart the NIE

From The Washington Post:

Rarely has a document from the supposedly hidden world of intelligence had such an impact as the National Intelligence Estimate released this week. Rarely has an administration been so unprepared for such an event. And rarely have vehement critics of the "intelligence community" on issues such as Iraq's weapons of mass destruction reversed themselves so quickly.

All this shows that we not only have a problem interpreting what the mullahs in Tehran are up to, but also a more fundamental problem: Too much of the intelligence community is engaging in policy formulation rather than "intelligence" analysis, and too many in Congress and the media are happy about it. President Bush may not be able to repair his Iran policy (which was not rigorous enough to begin with) in his last year, but he would leave a lasting legacy by returning the intelligence world to its proper function.

Consider these flaws in the NIE's "key judgments," which were made public even though approximately 140 pages of analysis, and reams of underlying intelligence, remain classified.

First, the headline finding -- that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 -- is written in a way that guarantees the totality of the conclusions will be misread. In fact, there is little substantive difference between the conclusions of the 2005 NIE on Iran's nuclear capabilities and the 2007 NIE. Moreover, the distinction between "military" and "civilian" programs is highly artificial, since the enrichment of uranium, which all agree Iran is continuing, is critical to civilian and military uses. Indeed, it has always been Iran's "civilian" program that posed the main risk of a nuclear "breakout."

The real differences between the NIEs are not in the hard data but in the psychological assessment of the mullahs' motives and objectives. The current NIE freely admits to having only moderate confidence that the suspension continues and says that there are significant gaps in our intelligence and that our analysts dissent from their initial judgment on suspension. This alone should give us considerable pause.

Second, the NIE is internally contradictory and insufficiently supported. It implies that Iran is susceptible to diplomatic persuasion and pressure, yet the only event in 2003 that might have affected Iran was our invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, not exactly a diplomatic pas de deux. As undersecretary of state for arms control in 2003, I know we were nowhere near exerting any significant diplomatic pressure on Iran. Nowhere does the NIE explain its logic on this critical point. Moreover, the risks and returns of pursuing a diplomatic strategy are policy calculations, not intelligence judgments. The very public rollout in the NIE of a diplomatic strategy exposes the biases at work behind the Potemkin village of "intelligence."

Third, the risks of disinformation by Iran are real. We have lost many fruitful sources inside Iraq in recent years because of increased security and intelligence tradecraft by Iran. The sudden appearance of new sources should be taken with more than a little skepticism. In a background briefing, intelligence officials said they had concluded it was "possible" but not "likely" that the new information they were relying on was deception. These are hardly hard scientific conclusions. One contrary opinion came from -- of all places -- an unnamed International Atomic Energy Agency official, quoted in the New York Times, saying that "we are more skeptical. We don't buy the American analysis 100 percent. We are not that generous with Iran." When the IAEA is tougher than our analysts, you can bet the farm that someone is pursuing a policy agenda.

Fourth, the NIE suffers from a common problem in government: the overvaluation of the most recent piece of data. In the bureaucracy, where access to information is a source of rank and prestige, ramming home policy changes with the latest hot tidbit is commonplace, and very deleterious. It is a rare piece of intelligence that is so important it can conclusively or even significantly alter the body of already known information. Yet the bias toward the new appears to have exerted a disproportionate effect on intelligence analysis.

Fifth, many involved in drafting and approving the NIE were not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department, brought into the new central bureaucracy of the director of national intelligence. These officials had relatively benign views of Iran's nuclear intentions five and six years ago; now they are writing those views as if they were received wisdom from on high. In fact, these are precisely the policy biases they had before, recycled as "intelligence judgments."

That such a flawed product could emerge after a drawn-out bureaucratic struggle is extremely troubling. While the president and others argue that we need to maintain pressure on Iran, this "intelligence" torpedo has all but sunk those efforts, inadequate as they were. Ironically, the NIE opens the way for Iran to achieve its military nuclear ambitions in an essentially unmolested fashion, to the detriment of us all.

John R. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad." He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

First off aren't you sorry Mr. Bolton isn't still our UN Ambassador? One more thing we have to thank those worthless sacks of feces in the Democrat controlled congress for.

Second this NIE is very soon going to be thoroughly discredited and will no longer be a factor anywhere outside the left-wing fever swamps of dailykos and MSNBC. It was clearly another attack upon the administration by the leftist shadow-government which exists within the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon - just like Joe Wilson's trip to Niger.

That a hyper-partisan fool like Keith Olbermann will uncritically accept anything which seems to harm the Bush administration regardless of how questionable it is comes as no surprise. Olbermann is simply too stupid to be able to think critically about something like this. Olbermann, like the pinhead biting the heads off of chickens in the traveling carnival, is supporting himself by doing the only kind of lawful work his limited intellectual gifts equip him for.

But what about the people in the State Department and CIA and Pentagon and the more responsible journalist and the Democrat politicians who have IQs above room temperature? How can they create and uphold and spread this kind of nonsense?

How can American citizens take actions which will aid and abet a rogue terror state like Iran, a nation ruled by fanatics in the grip of an apocalyptic theology, in their efforts to acquire atomic weapons? How can these people be so insane that they would regard actions which could ultimately contribute to a nuclear war as being an acceptable risk as long as it lets them score some political points against a president whom they happen to dislike and disagree with?

Honestly, can any of you see Republicans doing something so reckless and dangerous simply to embarrass and limit the options of a Democrat president no matter how despicable he or she might be?

Failing to learn from history

From The Washington Post:

SAUDI ARABIA's foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, basked in praise and attention from the Bush administration at last week's Annapolis peace conference. He was thanked repeatedly for deigning to attend the kickoff of Israeli-Palestinian talks; national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley said he told the prince that "I know it must have been a very difficult decision." Reporters took note as Prince Saud lambasted Israel and explained why he could not possibly stoop to shake the hand of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Thank goodness one journalist thought to ask about the "Girl of Qatif."

The Girl of Qatif, as she is known in the Saudi press, is a 20-year-old married woman who was gang-raped, together with a male acquaintance, by seven men last year in her eastern Saudi town. A judge sentenced the rapists to prison sentences -- and also condemned the woman to 90 lashes with a whip, for being alone in a car with a man to whom she was unrelated. When the woman's lawyer, one of Saudi Arabia's most courageous human rights advocates, appealed the case, another court increased the woman's penalty to 200 lashes and six months in jail. Attorney Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem was barred from representing the woman further and his lawyer's license was suspended pending a disciplinary hearing. After human rights groups and the State Department protested the barbaric punishment and called on the Saudi government to annul it, the Justice Ministry responded with a defiant statement justifying the court's decision.

For the record, Prince Saud said that another court would review the case. He didn't elaborate. But he did expound, at length, about why he thought it outrageous for Israel to suggest that millions of Palestinian refugees would not be allowed to settle in the Jewish state as part of a peace settlement. In doing so, he harmed rather than helped Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who -- like Prince Saud -- knows very well that Palestinians will have to give up the "right of return" to Israel in any negotiated peace.

Six years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, it was widely acknowledged in and outside the Bush administration that Saudi Arabia -- the homeland of 15 of the 19 hijackers, along with Osama bin Laden -- was a threat as well as an oil supplier to the United States. Its embrace of extremist Islamic ideology, its vigorous efforts to spread that creed throughout the Middle East and beyond and its sponsorship of groups like the Taliban were a far more direct cause of anti-Western terrorism than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For several years the Bush administration pressed the Saudi regime for reforms; the regime responded with half steps that didn't change its essential nature. Most of the suicide bombers in Iraq have been Saudis. Yet in the last year, led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Bush administration has abruptly returned to describing Saudi Arabia as a "mainstream" and "moderate" state and a staunch U.S. ally. Once again the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is treated as the Middle East's most critical problem and Prince Saud as a statesman who is to be congratulated for appearing in the same room as an Israeli. The case of the Girl of Qatif ought to be a reminder of what the Bush administration has chosen to forget.

There are probably a great many reasons for this change of attitude on the administration's part. One would be the desire of the president to have an untainted legacy. Even though it now seems all but certain that Iraq will be a success there will always be an asterisk next to it leading to a footnote about how there were no weapons of mass destruction.

Dr. Rice is also most likely seeking to be remembered for something other than being the first black woman Secretary of State. Being the diplomat who negotiated the "definitive end to the Middle East Crisis" would secure her a place in the history books.

Then there's the fact that no president gets too far on the wrong side of the Saudis because the Saudis are the great financiers of presidential libraries and payers of gigantic fees to hear former presidents give long boring speeches.

$3.00 gasoline and the fact that the Saudis have the ability to raise or lower their production of oil which will raise or lower the pump price of gas in the US probably also has something to do with the tone Washington takes toward Saudi Arabia.

One of the reasons I doubt Darwin is that observing other people's mistakes and learning from them would seem to be a class-A survival trait and yet humans (the apex of the food chain on Earth) have almost no capacity for it. How else to explain how even after "peace in our time" civilized nations still think they can negotiate with barbarians and expect any different result than Chamberlain got.

The only way that any good will come out of the current foolishness in Annapolis is if it is being used as a distraction from the IDF's plans to bomb the snot out of the Iranian nuclear sites.

Fears?

From The Times Online:

A claim by President Ahmadinejad that Iran has 3,000 working uranium-enriching centrifuges sent a tremor across the world yesterday amid fears that Israel would respond by bombing the country’s nuclear facilities.

Military sources in Washington said that the existence of such a large number could be a “tipping point”, triggering an Israeli air strike. The Pentagon is reluctant to take military action against Iran, but officials say that Israel is a “different matter”. Amid the international uproar, British MPs who were to have toured the nuclear facility were backing out of their Iran trip.

Even before President Ahmadinejad’s announcement, a US defence official told The Times yesterday: “Israel could do something when they get to around 3,000 working centrifuges. The Pentagon is minded to wait a little longer.” US experts say 3,000 machines running for long periods could make enough enriched uranium for an atomic bomb within a year.

Israel responded by serving notice that it would not tolerate a nuclear Iran. “Talks never did, and never will, stop rockets,” said Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, after talks with the security cabinet.

The US and Western allies believe that Iran is using its civilian nuclear programme as a cover for weapon development. Tehran says that it merely wants to generate electricity.

The Times' headline for this story is:

US fears Israeli strike against Iran over latest nuclear claim

What I want to know is who exactly "fears" an Israeli strike against Iran? I'm hoping that they take the Iranian nuclear program out and that we help them.

They do tend to shoot back, you know

From The New York Times:

GAZA — The three Abu Ghazala fathers were in mourning, in the Palestinian way, sitting with their relatives recently in a shaded courtyard, open to the fields of watermelon and eggplant in which their children had died.

The children — Yehiya, 12, Mahmoud, 9, and Sara, 9 — were tending goats and playing tag on Aug. 29 when an Israeli shell or rocket blew them apart. “They went up to that palm tree,” said Ramadan Abu Ghazala, Yehiya’s father, pointing 300 yards away. “They went there every day.”

As the fathers, all farmers, talked, an Israeli blimp, with cameras, hovered in the sky above Beit Hanoun on the northern edge of Gaza, an Israeli drone buzzed in the air and an Israeli watchtower loomed over the nearby border. It was the blimp or the drone, presumably, that first identified the target.

Fatah, the more secular and nationalist of the two main Palestinian movements, and the opposition here in Hamas-run Gaza, has adopted the three young cousins. A Fatah flag flies over the house where they all lived. Fatah has published a “martyr” poster of the three, with Sara represented, between the boys, by a large bunch of red roses. Anyone who dies for any reason in the fight with Israel is regarded by Palestinians as a martyr, with a rapid path to heaven.

The Israeli Army said the children were playing near a launcher used to send Qassam rockets into Israel to try to kill or destroy anyone and anything they happen to land on — children, soldiers, livestock. Sderot, an Israeli city visible from here, has been the main target, and its residents live in fear, running to shelters when an alarm sounds. Sometimes they do not make it.

How nice of Fatah to "adopt" them and declare them to be martyrs since it is Fatah which is responsable for their deaths.

Here's some advice for the Palestinians. Stop trying to destroy Israel and murder Jews and this kind of thing will stop happening.

The hand puppet doesn't move without the hand

From The New York Times:

Political analysts here say they are surprised at the degree to which the West focuses on their president, saying that it reflects a general misunderstanding of their system.

Unlike in the United States, in Iran the president is not the head of state nor the commander in chief. That status is held by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, whose role combines civil and religious authority. At the moment, this president’s power comes from two sources, they say: the unqualified support of the supreme leader, and the international condemnation he manages to generate when he speaks up.

“The United States pays too much attention to Ahmadinejad,” said an Iranian political scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “He is not that consequential.”

[. . .]

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s power stems not from his office per se, but from the refusal of his patron, Ayatollah Khamenei, and some hard-line leaders, to move beyond Iran’s revolutionary identity, which makes full relations with the West impossible. There are plenty of conservatives and hard-liners who take a more pragmatic view, wanting to retain “revolutionary values” while integrating Iran with the world, at least economically. But they are not driving the agenda these days, and while that could change, it will not be the president who makes that call.

“Iran has never been interested in reaching an accommodation with the United States,” the Iranian political scientist said. “It cannot reach an accommodation as long as it retains the current structure.”

What the Times is trying to do is make all the fuss over Imadinnerjacket's attempt to visit Ground Zero seem misplaced and a bit hysterical. However all they succeed in doing is reminding us why we should be focused on jacket-boy. He is nothing, has never been anything and never will be anything, other than a hand-puppet for the people who really rule Iran.

He says no words which they do not put into his mouth and takes no actions which they do not direct him to take.

By watching him we learn what the people who really run that unfortunate nation are really thinking and planning.

One step closer to an Islamic bomb

WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 — The Sept. 6 attack by Israeli warplanes inside Syria struck what Israeli intelligence believes was a nuclear-related facility that North Korea was helping to equip, according to current and former American and Israeli officials.

Details about the Israeli assessment emerged as China abruptly canceled planned diplomatic talks in Beijing that were to set a schedule to disband nuclear facilities in North Korea. The Bush administration has declined to comment on the Israeli raid, but American officials were expected to confront the North Koreans about their suspected nuclear support for Syria during those talks.

The American and Israeli officials said the Israeli government notified the Bush administration about the planned attack just before the raid. It is not clear whether administration officials expressed support for the action or counseled against it.

The raid has aroused intense speculation in Washington and Jerusalem, but details remain extraordinarily murky. Officials said access to new intelligence about suspected North Korean support to Syria has been confined to a very small group of officials in Washington and Jerusalem.

We wonder why the Chinese are canceling talks about dismantling the North Korean nuclear program. Perhaps they want to protect the North Koreans from any confrontation with the United States.

What we have to consider here is that Syria is a satellite of Iran. Whatever technology the Syrians get will sooner than later find its way to Iran.

I have a challenge to all the Ron Paul pod-people. Put this together with the fact that Syria, Iran and North Korea all have access to nuclear scientists and engineers who used to build the nuclear weapons for the Soviet Union and then tell me how all this doesn't add up to a threat.

War with Iran?

From The Telegraph:

Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran's nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.

Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran.

Now it has emerged that Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution, is prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action.

In a chilling scenario of how war might come, a senior intelligence officer warned that public denunciation of Iranian meddling in Iraq - arming and training militants - would lead to cross border raids on Iranian training camps and bomb factories.

A prime target would be the Fajr base run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force in southern Iran, where Western intelligence agencies say armour-piercing projectiles used against British and US troops are manufactured.

Under the theory - which is gaining credence in Washington security circles - US action would provoke a major Iranian response, perhaps in the form of moves to cut off Gulf oil supplies, providing a trigger for air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities and even its armed forces.

Senior officials believe Mr Bush's inner circle has decided he does not want to leave office without first ensuring that Iran is not capable of developing a nuclear weapon.

From their lips (or printing press) to God's ears.

Seriously, the one thing that lends this any credence whatsoever is in the last sentence above. Mr. Bush is a grownup and a patriot and he knows that his successor is likely to be a Democrat with no capacity to see the world as it really is or formulate any kind of intelligent policy toward our adversaries.

You will all remember that North Korea was only able to develop nuclear weapons was because of a deal made by the first Clinton administration in which we paid them off in exchange for a promise (which was broken, and a chimpanzee could have predicted that it would be) that they would stop developing nuclear weapons.

George W Bush knows that unlike North Korean dictator Kim, who cares about nothing past his own survival in power and comfort, the mullahs who govern Iran follow an eschatological vision which tells them that the return of the "Hidden Imam" and the ultimate triumph of Islam can be brought about by the ignition of a regional, if not global, holocaust.

The Iranians will not permanently abandon their nuclear program any more than Christians will stop praying to Jesus or religious Jews will stop observing the Sabbath.

Mr. Bush knows this and almost all conservatives know this. Almost no elected Democrat knows this other than Joe Lieberman (and he isn't a Democrat any more). As for the libertarians - forget about it - they hold a worldview in which all human action is economically determined and they are as dogmatically locked into this view as any Marxist.

George W Bush has consistently shown that he cares more about doing what he believes to be right for the country than he does about keeping his poll numbers high or even about the electoral future of the Republican Party. Even when I've disagreed with him, as I did on amnesty, I've never doubted that he was doing what he sincerely believed to be in the nation's best interest.

If Iran gets nuclear weapons and the Iranian government remains unchanged then sooner or later Iran will use those weapons certainly against Israel and possibly against Europe. If the President believes that the only way to derail Iran's nuclear ambitions is to destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities and remove the Iranian government and that he can accomplish this before an enraged Democrat moonbat base forces their elected Democrat politicians to finally withdraw all funding for any US military involvement in the Middle East he may very well do it.

This just in

From The Jerusalem Post:

Syrian air defenses opened fire on Israeli aircraft that violated Syrian airspace overnight Thursday, a Syrian military spokesman said.

The Israelis broke the sound barrier and "dropped ammunition" over deserted areas of northern Syria overnight, the spokesman was quoted by the official Syrian Arab News Agency.

"We warn the Israeli enemy government against this flagrant aggressive act, and retain the right to respond in an appropriate way," the Syrian spokesman said.

It was not clear if Syria was accusing the Israelis of using warplanes or some type of other aircraft like drones.

"The Israeli enemy aircraft infiltrated into the Arab Syrian territory through the northern border, coming from the Mediterranean heading toward the eastern region, breaking the sound barrier," the spokesman said.

"Air defense units confronted them and forced them to leave after they dropped some ammunition in deserted areas without causing any human or material damage."

The IDF said that it was "not accustomed to responding to such reports."

Israel acknowledges flying over Lebanon routinely, but it is unclear how often its aircraft fly over Syria, if at all.

At the beginning of last summer's war against Lebanon, Israeli warplanes buzzed the palace of Syrian President Bashar Assad in what analysts called a warning to Damascus.

In June of the same year, they also flew over Assad's summer home in the coastal city of Latakia, after Syrian-backed Palestinian militants in Gaza kidnapped IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Schalit.

The question is this, how badly do the Syrians want their asses kicked?

Sorry, no war with Iran any time soon

From WorldNetDaily:

The Pentagon has formulated a "three-day blitz" plan to annihilate Iran's military that targets 1,200 sites, including Tehran's nuclear facilities, in order to render its military incapable of conducting offensive, defensive or retaliatory missions.

According to the London Sunday Times, citing Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, the Pentagon has rejected a strategy of "pinprick strikes" against Iran's nuclear facilities.

"They're about taking out the entire Iranian military," Debat said. [. . .]

President Bush increased his rhetoric against Iran's nuclear program last week, saying Tehran had put the Mideast "under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust" and indicated action would be taken against the program "before it is too late."

According to a Times source close to the Bush administration, the president's recent statements were meant as "a message to a number of audiences" – Iran and the U.N. Security Council. [. . .]

Revelation of a plan for a three-day blitz to destroy Iran's fighting ability indicates the administration leans toward the use of rapid, overwhelming force if the military option is used.

"Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same," Debat said. Massive use of force was, he said, a "very legitimate strategic calculus."

Rick Moran at American Thinker calls this (the original London Times article) stroy The Left's Bullwinkle Gambit:

Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war..." Except that President Bush has been talking that way about Iran for the past 5 years. And yes, we have received similar warnings from a variety of sources in that time that we were on the brink of war with Iran - at least according to the left.

But like Bullwinkle in the old Rocky and Bullwinkle skit where the talking moose tries to pull a rabbit out of his hat time and time again ("Nothin' up my sleeve...PRESTO! Ooops...wrong hat") the left laughably keeps coming up empty in their dire predictions about going to war with Iran. I have lost track of the number of times that I've read at Daily Kos that we are on the eve of Armageddon: [. . .]

A few months ago we had 3 aircraft carrier battle groups in the Persian Gulf and the left went ballistic, believing war with Iran was hours away. It wasn't, of course, and it probably isn't now. But the fact that every rational leader in Europe and the developed world have said to one degree or another that the idea of Iran having a nuclear capability is unacceptable (including most recently, the President of France) should give our clueless friends on the left the idea that not taking an attack on Iran off the table - despite the enormous potential downside - is part of the language of diplomacy that we are carrying on with the mullahs in Tehran. We may eventually feel forced to attack the Iranians. We may not. But planning for the eventuality is only prudent and is also part of the diplomatic language we are exchanging with the Iranians.

I have been hearing that war with Iran is immanent from people on the right as well as those on the left. I agree with my friends on the right that taking out the lunatic regime in Tehran is the right thing to do. It is the morally and strategically correct thing to do, but it is not the politically correct thing to do.

The Republican and Democrat primaries are happening now and next year is a presidential general election. To begin a new war in the Middle East would cause the Left in America and Europe to explode. It would drag the Democrat Party much further to the left than it already is (yes, Virginia they aren't as far to the left as they could be) as congressmen and presidential candidates raced each other to the microphone to announce that Bush has gone over the edge and that America must completely withdraw from the Middle East before we start WWIII.

A large number of Republican legislators seem to be emotionally constructed to do only one thing well - cringe. Republican resistance to surrender in Iraq would collapse and all the tragic scenario of an American defeat in Iraq, from genocide to more 9/11 scale attacks on US soil, would begin to play out.

The president knows this. He is walking as fine a line as he can on the Iran issue. The only way we will attack Iran is after the election and only if the new president-elect signs off on the plan and we have Old Europe on board (which might happen given what the French are saying).

About damn time!

From The Washington Times:

The United States has decided to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a "specially designated global terrorist," according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group's business operations and finances.

The Bush administration has chosen to move against the Revolutionary Guard Corps because of what U.S. officials have described as its growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East, the sources said. The decision follows congressional pressure on the administration to toughen its stance against Tehran, as well as U.S. frustration with the ineffectiveness of U.N. resolutions against Iran's nuclear program, officials said.

The designation of the Revolutionary Guard will be made under Executive Order 13224, which President Bush signed two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to obstruct terrorist funding. It authorizes the United States to identify individuals, businesses, charities and extremist groups engaged in terrorist activities. The Revolutionary Guard would be the first national military branch included on the list, U.S. officials said -- a highly unusual move because it is part of a government, rather than a typical non-state terrorist organization.

Ever since the Iranian Revolution when our embassy personnel were taken hostage by so-called students, with the full cooperation of the new Iranian government, we have identified Iran as a rogue state.

We have known that it was a totalitarian oppressive theocratic dictatorship which has been, and remains, one of the world's premier state sponsors of terrorism.

We have known that the Revolutionary Guard acts to arm and train terrorists around the world and they they have been supplying the insurgents in Iraq with all manner of weapons, including IED's.

My question is why has this move been such a long time coming?

Now I sit back and eagerly await news of the air raids on Revolutionary Guard facilities in Iran.

A necessary division

The New York Times' headline for this story is "A Segregated Road in an Already Divided Land":

JERUSALEM, Aug. 10 — Israel is constructing a road through the West Bank, east of Jerusalem, that will allow both Israelis and Palestinians to travel along it — separately.

There are two pairs of lanes, one for each tribe, separated by a tall wall of concrete patterned to look like Jerusalem stones, an effort at beautification indicating that the road is meant to be permanent. The Israeli side has various exits; the Palestinian side has few.

Do we need to remind people why the Israelis very lives depend on keeping Palestinians out of Israel? Do we need to remind people why the land is "divided" in the first place.

Dealing with the Saudis

WASHINGTON, July 26 — During a high-level meeting in Riyadh in January, Saudi officials confronted a top American envoy with documents that seemed to suggest that Iraq’s prime minister could not be trusted.

One purported to be an early alert from the prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr warning him to lie low during the coming American troop increase, which was aimed in part at Mr. Sadr’s militia. Another document purported to offer proof that Mr. Maliki was an agent of Iran.

The American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, immediately protested to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, contending that the documents were forged. But, said administration officials who provided an account of the exchange, the Saudis remained skeptical, adding to the deep rift between America’s most powerful Sunni Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, and its Shiite-run neighbor, Iraq.

Now, Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia’s counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.

One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because, he said, “That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who is not.” [which tells you about everything you need to know right there - LC]

The Saudi problem reveals the complexity of fighting the war on terror. Wahhabi Islam is the engine driving al Qaeda. It is the force which is radicalizing hundreds of thousands of young Muslim men across the globe and it is the invention and the number two export (after oil) of Saudi Arabia.

Every Friday all across Saudi Arabia insane imams rant and rave about the evils of the United States, Israel, Christianity and the Jews. That the Saudis believe this can be seen in the fact that the majority of 9/11 hijackers were Saudis and that the bulk of the foreign fighters who are doing everything in their power to make Iraq appear to be in a state of civil war are Saudi.

Yet they are also the world's largest supplier of oil and they are the only nation which maintains the ability to reduce or increase their oil production. This makes them extremely important to the world's economic health.

Therefore they have to be coddled, at least to some extent.

It seems to me that the best answer is to do two things. One is to pour whatever resources into Iraq we have to in order to stabilize the country and get a functioning government in place. If this means sending in more troops then do it. If it means bombing Iran to discourage them from providing training and weapons to the terrorists then we should do it.

The second thing is to develop realistic alternative energy sources. During WWII the Germans came very close to perfecting the process for turning coal into motor fuel. I'm told that the South Africans continued that work and made progress on it before the fall of the apartheid government.

The United States, which possesses the largest coal reserves in the world, should finish the work and begin running its cars and trucks on coal-based motor fuel as soon as practical.

We should also move our electricity production over to nuclear power as fast as we can build power plants. By 2050 the Unites States should not generate one volt of electricity by burning oil or natural gas. In the meantime we should urge other nations to go nuclear to the greatest extent possible. The story in today's New York Times about Washington granting India an exception to rules created to prevent nations from producing nuclear fuel is a good thing. India is one of the world's fastest growing economies and they are consuming a greater and greater share of the world's oil to feed their energy demands. Moving them to nuclear energy will slow rising demands, and rising prices, for oil.

Radical Islam Exposed, Part V

This is the fifth chapter of Glen Beck's CNN (of all places) special on radical Islam. For more information on the danger of radical Islam I recommend Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America by Brigitte Gabriel. Ms. Gabriel is the woman being interviewed in this segment.

Germany backs US missile shield

Reuters - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday she does not oppose U.S. plans for an anti-missile shield to counter any future attack by Iran, a project that has strained ties between Russia and the West.

"I am not against Mr Putin but also not against the idea," Merkel said at a semi-annual news conference in response to a question about the U.S. shield plan. "I have always said that one cannot say there's no threat coming from Iran."

While her Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung has explicitly backed the U.S. plan, Merkel has been cautious when speaking about it and had not previously linked the shield to what the West perceives as the future threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful and will only be used to generate electricity, not to produce atom bomb fuel.

Washington wants to place 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar facility in the Czech Republic to protect the United States and its allies against potential missile attacks from what it calls "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea.

Isn't it amazing how the European elites will sneer at the US, talk down to the US, scold the US and seek political and economic arrangements to "counter" the US - yet the instant they feel threatened they will run to the US for protection, and act as though they are doing us a favor by it?

The article notes that the general public in the nations in which components of the anti-missile system will be based are against it.

This is the same thing that happened during the Reagan administration. We announced our plan to base cruise and Pershing missiles in NATO member states in Europe and the European common folk hit the streets in protest and the European politicians publicly denounced the plan - while privately asking us to hurry up with the deployment. At least now the politicians are openly supporting US actions.

Another similarity between now and the Cold War days is that the Russians had a cow when they found out what we were doing. In those days the reason for the Russian reaction was logical. Their entire war fighting strategy as far as NATO was concerned was built around the idea of a massive Blitzkrieg type assault built around an opening bombardment with theater nuclear weapons and followed up with immense formations of tanks and armored personnel carriers.

Their willingness to use tactical nukes in the opening stages of a war against NATO was predicated on the belief that the US would not retaliate with nuclear weapons fired from US soil to an attack on Europe for fear of drawing a Soviet retaliation against targets in the United States. The presence of US battlefield and theater nuclear weapons in Europe gave NATO the ability to respond to a Soviet nuclear strike on Europe from Europe and the proximity of the Soviet heartland to any European theater of operations made the USSR vulnerable in a way that the United States would not be.

When you add the enhanced radiation weapon (the neutron bomb) to the equation things went rapidly downhill form the Soviet perspective. The neutron bomb would destroy the massed formations of tanks and APC's around which Russian combat doctrine was built (and do it without ruining the countryside and scattering large clouds of deadly fallout). And they would do it without NATO even having to commit its own numerically smaller armored forces to the effort. If the Soviets dispersed its armor it invited defeat in detail by the technologically superior Western military.

Of course Soviet plans did not actually involve an invasion of Western Europe. Their strategic planning was built around the idea of intimidation. Their purpose in menacing Europe with such massive forces was to frighten the Europeans into adopting a posture of appeasement toward the USSR and chipping away at the Atlantic Alliance. It also had the side-effect which was at first probably unanticipated, but later heavily exploited, of scaring the European general public into a kind of national Stockholm Syndrome where they began to identify with the Soviets and turn against the US.

America which had already shown itself willing to spend its blood and treasure to defend Europe twice in the 20th century and was willing to do so again became the bad guy in the European mind. America which was willing to risk calling down nuclear destruction upon its own cities to keep Europe from being absorbed into the Soviet empire came to be seen as the imperialist aggressor. That attitude of seeing the United States as the "real" threat is never far from the European mind.

But what explain the Russian determination to have a cow over this. If the Soviet Union is dead and the new Russian Federation is ready to join the civilized world why are they acting as though Brezhnev has returned from the dead and taken back the reigns of power? Why is Putin afraid for the US and Europe to deploy a purely defensive weapons system close to its borders? Why is he desperate for Europe to leave itself open to a nuclear attack? Why is he willing to begin a new arms race (which Russia can no more win today than the USSR could have won in the 1980's) and restart the Cold War?

Is it injured Slavic pride? Is Putin upset and stung by the fact that once mighty Russia is now separated from the Third World only by its large nuclear arsenal? Does he resent any development in Europe which diminishes the last thing Russia has that keeps it relevant? Or is there something else going on.

We now know why France worked so hard to keep the United States from invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein. They were in bed with Saddam and French government leaders were pocketing millions of dollars in bribe money from the Iraqi regime. The US actions in Iraq not only shut off the money spigot to Europe it exposed the corruption of many European politicians (not that anyone in Europe seemed to care).

Could there be something like this going on with Russia today? What could the Iranians be giving Russia in general, or Putin specifically, that could cause him to risk a confrontation with the US that he could not possibly win?

Iran has two things that Russia might possibly value. One is oil and the other is control of large and dangerous terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. Russia has its own oil so the question is why would Putin want influence with terrorist organizations which are centered in the "Shi'ite Crescent" and have as their primary goal the destruction of Israel?

If you think I'm going to tie everything together and explain it all to your satisfaction I'm going to have to disappoint you. I'm frankly puzzled by Russia's behavior, but I believe that their relationship with Iran is the thing to watch. Time will reveal something going on there which will not be to the advantage of the US or its allies.

The definition of insanity is . . .

From The Washington Post:

President Bush launched a diplomatic effort yesterday to revive the long-moribund Middle East peace process, announcing aid to the Palestinian government and calling for an international conference this fall aimed at paving the way for the creation of a Palestinian state side by side with Israel.

Five years after becoming the first president to fully embrace a "two-state solution," Bush acknowledged that it remains distant after violent clashes that have politically sundered the Palestinian territories. But Bush called this a "moment of choice" for the region and renewed his commitment heading into his final 18 months in office.

I have no doubt that future historians will look back on this era and scratch their heads with wonder at how the United States, Europe and Israel itself could have repeated the same error over and over again and expected a different result.

I am certain that there are Palestinian people who wish to live at peace with Israel. We know this because from time to time mobs of average Palestinian people locate a collaborator (someone who wishes to live at peace with Israel) and stone them to death in the streets. So they do exist, but have learned not to advertise their existence.

The fact that these peace-loving and tolerant Palestinians make up only as vanishingly small part of the total Palestinian population (and getting smaller all the time as more of them are identified and murdered by their neighbors) seems to go right over the heads of Western political leaders.

I'm going to be politically incorrect here and state the plain and simple truth. If you want a Palestinian state to exist side-by-side with Israel then Jordan should be that state. The population of Jordan already consists of a majority of Palestinian Arabs and the state itself was carved out of the original Palestinian Mandate. Israel should formally annex Gaza and the West Bank and relocate all Palestinians found there to Jordan. The UN should then recognize Israel's new borders and set about sending aid to Jordan to help the new Jordanian citizens integrate into Jordanian society.

The UN should also set up a buffer zone between Jordan and Israel and aggressively patrol it to prevent terrorists from crossing into Israel. US troops would have to be used for this since the antisemitism of most Europeans would cause them to look the other way most of the time and let suicide bombers and other terrorists slip past them.

This will not happen, of course. The UN is itself an antisemitic body. It is also a democratic organization made up of representatives of nations which are not free and are hostile to nations which are free. It would simply be unnatural for the dictators' club on Turtle Bay to favor free Israel over the unfree Arab states even if antisemitism was not a part of the equation.

If Israel wishes to solve its Palestinian problem it must realize that the answer is not to be found in international conferences.

Thoughts on the London bomb plot

The New York Times is carrying a summary of what is known so far about the London bomb plot. Really no new information, but they are reporting the continued official speculation that the plot had an al Qaeda connection:

But the idea of a multiple attack using car bombs — a departure from the backpack suicide attacks of the London bombings of July 2005 — raised concerns among security experts that jihadist groups linked to Al Qaeda may have imported tactics more familiar in Iraq.

This does not necessarily mean that the people who constructed and planted the bombs were foreigners who entered the UK specifically to carry out these attacks, like the 9/11 hijackers in America.

The greatest danger today is that the work of terrorism will be carried out by native born Muslim citizens who have been radicalized. This pattern is seen all across Europe where third generation Muslims who have never been outside of Belgium or France or Britain are less assimilated than their grandparents who had spent most of their lives in Pakistan, Morocco or Egypt.

The driving force behind this is the government of Saudi Arabia's exportation of the extreme brand of Sunni Islam known as Whabbism. The Saudis have been diverting some of their billions of dollars in oil revenue to underwrite the cost of constructing mosques and Islamic religious schools throughout the world. The only condition attached to this largess is that the type of Islam being taught in these institutions be the radical Whabbism.

Adding to the trouble is the practice in many European nations of actively discouraging Muslim immigrants and their children from assimilating beyond a certain point. Bruce Bawer tells the story in his book While Europe Slept of:

". . . [A]n immigrant from a non-Western country who left Norway for eight years to attend medical school and complete his internship and residency. On his return, he went to the social services department to ask for help in finding a job (that's how things work in Norway.) He was told that they couldn't help him find a mecical position - but that if he wanted to be a trainee at a grocery store they'd be glad to be of service. And if he insisted on being a doctor? 'Go to your country and work as a doctor there, but not here!' he was told".

Throwing more fuel on the fire is the apparatus of the political left. The mainstream media in the US and Europe, the academic establishment and left-wing politicians are united in screeching as loudly as possible and to anyone who will listen that the United States and its Western allies who invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein were wrong and immoral to do so (apparently the only part of the West's Christian heritage the atheist left continues to cling to is the concept of the divine right of kings - Saddam had an absolute right to treat his subjects any way he pleased and no effort to change the situation was permitted).

The chorus of the left amplifies every setback for the West in Iraq and magnifies every success of the insurgency. The .0002% of soldiers who don't believe in the mission are held up as though they were the rightful spokesmen of the entire military and atrocity stories whispered to leftist "journalists" by "stringers" with connections to terrorist groups are believed over the sworn testimony of American officers and men.

The only narrative of the war which the left will tolerate is that the imperialist bungler George W Bush invaded the Middle East in order to steal its oil for Dick Cheney and his cronies and to force all the Muslims to become foot-washing Baptists like he is. Bushitler was aided in this by his lapdog European toadies like Tony "The Poodle" Blair. Due to the incompetence of its leadership and the unrighteousness of its cause the West had gotten itself into a quagmire from which it cannot extricate itself as the forces of an ascendant Islamic nationalism defeat its forces in detail.

This foundation myth of the modern left gives them everything they need for happiness. A just cause to support. Non-white indigenous people as allies to be patronized and a White male Christian enemy to be seen as the personification of all that is evil (George W Bush). Thus equipped the average leftist can go on his smug and sanctimonious way, filled up to the nose holes with esteem for himself and utterly oblivious to reality.

However as the song says, "You can twist perceptions but reality won't budge". Reality is two car bombs in the heart of London. Reality is that the left is serving the Islamofascists in the role of "useful idiots" as faithfully as they ever served the Soviet Union. Reality is the fact that militant jihadists hate liberal or "progressive" Westerners even more than they hate conservative Christians and Jews because their hatred of the left is mixed with the abject contempt which anyone willing to stand up and fight for what he believes in feels for the coward and the traitor.